To be fair, I've only owned one house to date, and thankfully it was neither a disaster waiting to happen, nor in a hurricane zone.

Instinctively, I'd say that other than making sure the wiring is OK (might have fried a circuit or two if the thing was struck by lightning, rewire as required), is the roof. You may end up finding that the whole thing doesn't make it much longer and needs replaced, and at that point I'd guess you're looking at 5 figures and a likely equity loan to solve the problem. Which isn't the end of the world, but it could hurt if you're dropping below 20% equity in the house.

Oh, make sure there aren't a ton of shingles underneath the top layer. One place I looked at had 3 roofs on it, and they ALL needed to go.

Three layers of shingles used to be pretty common. In Iowa (Central-Southern, at least) they have amended the code and only allow 2. They would prefer tear offs for all jobs but haven't gone that far yet.

Besides multiple layers of shingle you may also have rotting plywood sheeting which would need to be replaced. With leakage occurring this becomes even more likely.

I've started more jobs that I thought were $250 jobs that cost me $1500 by the time I was done than I can count. 8^)

I'm not sure what exactly fried your breakers, but just changing them isn't a solution, it's a bandaid.

Take your money and go unless you are prepared to repair everything 100% which would mean after closing getting an electrician to check out the entire house and being prepared to fix what needs to be fixed.

Have you ever run electrical? It works pretty much like this:

You have a mains connection in your house. Power goes to the meter, into the electrical panel to a mains breaker. What you need to do is have the utility remove the gold ring, remove the meter, and then you can mess with the main power breaker (replace, rewire, add stuff before the box). For the breakers themselves, you shut the main breaker off and you're good (as long as you have the sense to work with electricity--remember there's still a HOT wire).

The mains line is aluminum. The secondary circuits are all supposed to be copper. Copper runs through your house to your sockets. Hot, neutral, ground. Has to be wired CORRECTLY to the sockets.

Socket test: there's a plug-in device that not only tells you if it's right or not, but tells you if it's wired incorrectly and how. Bad ground, neutral/hot swap, ground/neutral swap, and so on.

The wiring's pretty much checked by looking at the panel or at the socket (you'd have to go out of your way to do something wrong here and it would not be to code). Basically is it the right gauge wire?

What do you think killed the breakers? I'm going to go with "current overload," because it'll do that. The typical way to fix this is "replace the breakers," that's the correct solution. Breakers have failure modes and this is one of them.

Source: Experience. Father is an electrical engineer and has electrician experience. Cousin works for the local electrical utility and has electrician experience ranging from home electrical wiring and inspection to opening and repairing transformers that are still hanging up on telephone poles (the big white buckets). We've been through this before and I ask too many questions--hell I spent 20 minutes while putting in a floor asking what the difference is between a dead blow and a rubber hammer and why one would be superior to the other (we had to use a rubber hammer, it was tangentially interesting). First time I saw an electrical panel open I wanted to know everything about how electricity works--did you know there's a sharp difference between braided and unbraided wire? Braided wire has multiple contact points, and electricity travels more "within" instead of just "on the outside" and causes impedance (if you're passing AC). This is important.

Blahblahblah.

Okay, there's probably a real reason that panel's dead. The power line is above ground, on poles, run through trees. It's highly likely to take direct lightning strike--the trees don't have the same protection the poles do (you think they just jack them in there and hope they never get hit?). So yeah, lightning, but it's highly likely to get hit by lightning. The house is a Zeus magnet.

Thanks for the somewhat condescending reply (feel free to remove the word - somewhat). My father is an Electrician (now almost retired) and I have vast experience with it over the past 40 years, oh, did I also forget to mention I am a Professional Engineer and have even considered becoming certified to be a home inspector. It sounds as if you have pinpointed exactly what went wrong with the house electrical and how just changing out the breakers will fix it.

If it blew the breakers it likely burned the insulation off the wiring at some point and that wiring will need to be replaced or it could start a fire if within the structure. Perhaps I should have stated that from the get go...how do I know...experience! You could also have individual switches which are toast, ballasts in fluorescent lighting, contacts in various appliances, etc.

PS: They are outlets, not sockets.

I stand by my advice given earlier and will remember to keep it to myself if you post a thread asking advice in the future.